Microsoft bakes ChatGPT-like tech into search engine

Microsoft is fusing ChatGPT-like technology into its search engine Bing, transforming an internet service that now trails far behind Google into a new way of communicating with artificial intelligence.

The revamping of Microsoft's second-place search engine could give the software giant a head start against other tech companies in capitalizing on the worldwide excitement surrounding ChatGPT, a tool that's awakened millions of people to the possibilities of the latest AI technology.

Along with adding it to Bing, Microsoft is also integrating the chatbot technology into its Edge browser. Microsoft announced the new technology at an event Tuesday at its headquarters in Redmond, Washington.

Yusuf Mehdi, a Microsoft executive who leads its consumer division, said a public preview of the new Bing launched Tuesday for desktop users who sign up for it, but the technology will scale to millions of users in coming weeks. Everyone can try a limited number of queries, he said.

The strengthening partnership with ChatGPTmaker OpenAI has been years in the making, starting with a $1 billion investment from Microsoft in 2019 that led to the development of a powerful supercomputer specifically built to train the San Francisco startup's AI models.

While it's not always factual or logical, ChatGPT's mastery of language and grammar comes from having ingested a huge trove of digitized books, Wikipedia entries, instruction manuals, newspapers and other online writings.

Microsoft Corp. CEO Satya Nadella said Tuesday that new AI advances are “going to reshape every software category we know,” including search, much like earlier innovations in personal computers and cloud computing. He said it is important to develop AI “with human preferences and societal norms and you're not going to do that in a lab. You have to do that out in the world.”

The shift to making search engines more conversational — able to confidently answer questions rather than offering links to other websites — could change the advertisingfueled search business, but also poses risks if the AI systems don't get their facts right. Their opaqueness also makes it hard to source back to the original human-made images and texts they've effectively memorized, though the new Bing includes annotations that link to sources.